Welcome, reader, and thanks for stopping by! I have recently started my vegan journey and resumed writing about my food experiences after a real long lapse! The shift in my lifestyle and attitude will surely be reflected in my blog. I am glad that my pleasure won't cause pain to another sentient being, a non-human person. I regret that I did not understand speciesism earlier. Better late than never! By the way, I usually don't follow a recipe!

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Sunday, August 23, 2015

Onion Fritter

I crave for fried food. I think I am addicted to fritters. Or,
may be, it is my Bengali gene that is responsible for this addiction. Lame
excuse? Trying to evade the responsibility for my own deed/folly? Well, visit
Kolkata, or any place in West Bengal for that matter! On every street, lane and
by-lane you will find since early evening seven days a week one or more, more
likely, busy shops selling various types of fritters: onion-, potato-,
eggplant- , pumpkin-, coriander leaves- (and other leaves) fritters, and
samosa, and vegetable chop (cutlet), even banana flower fritters, and the
non-veg ones like fish-, chicken-, mutton-, shrimp cutlets, what not. You have
to make your way shoving through a small crowd to reach the shopkeeper to
communicate your desire or choices since we don’t have the habit of forming a
queue; if we had there would have been a long queue in front of every shop.

At home I often prepare onion fritters, potato fritters and
red lentil fritters. A cook can actually has a lot of freedom while making
these and can do a lot of experiments with various ingredients. So, I really
have a number of recipes to share with you. Now I am writing about onion
fritters.

Shred onion. Add salt and a little black pepper powder to it
and mix very well. Some like it hot and they can add red chilli powder.

Add salt, a little cumin powder, a little baking powder to
chickpea flour and mix very well. Add water little by little and make a thick
paste. Add the onions to this mixture very well. You should have at least the
equal proportion of the chick pea flour paste as the onion. If onion is too
much in comparison to the paste it will not hold the ingredients together and
the flat and round shape of the fritter won’t form.

Deep fry in the oil of your choice. I won’t recommend olive
oil. We traditionally use mustard oil which I won’t recommend either since it
has a peculiar flavour that one might not like if they are not accustomed to
it. Please understand that I am not talking about the smell of mustard oil
here. We know how to cancel the smell while cooking but the food will still
have a flavour typical of mustard oil. My friends from Kerala can happily use
coconut oil. I love the sweet flavour of food fried in coconut oil. But coconut
oil is not for everyone’s taste buds.
Other than mustard oil, I also use sun flower oil and rice bran oil for
frying.